WEBVTT - Ep10 "Why is it so hard to spot a counterfeit bill?" 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:09.879 What do counterfeit bills have to do with brains? And 0:00:09.920 --> 0:00:12.479 why is it so hard for you to recognize a 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:15.200 real penny? And what does this have to do with 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:20.000 the building on the fifty euro bill recently getting replaced 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:23.520 with the face of the goddess Europa And what did 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:25.279 I have to do with that? And why did I 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:29.120 campaign to the European Central Bank that all bills should 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:36.400 be blank with a single hologram in the middle. Welcome 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:38.839 to Inner Cosmos with me, David Eagleman. 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:43.200 I'm a neuroscientist, and you might wonder how a neuroscientist 0:00:43.280 --> 0:00:47.880 got involved in studying counterfeit money. Ll hang tight, because 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:51.000 in this episode we're going to see how all these 0:00:51.080 --> 0:01:02.520 issues intersect. The most pervasive mistakes that we make is 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:07.360 believing that our visual systems give us a faithful representation of. 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:10.600 What's out there. We think of our vision the way 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:13.640 we think of a movie camera, like it's just capturing 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:16.880 the information from the world. But there are a whole 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:21.720 bunch of simple demonstrations that can quickly disabuse you of 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:26.880 this notion. For example, imagine that I show you two pictures. 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:29.360 I flash one, then it goes off, then the second 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:31.479 one comes on, then it goes off, then the first 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:34.240 one comes back on, and so on, So it alternates 0:01:34.240 --> 0:01:37.400 between pictures A and B, and it looks like it's 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:40.680 the same picture. But let's say I let you know 0:01:40.959 --> 0:01:44.320 that there is a difference between the pictures, and your 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:47.680 job is simply to spot the difference. Well, if you've 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:51.000 ever played these sorts of games before, you know how 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:55.640 surprisingly difficult it can be to tell the difference between them. 0:01:56.000 --> 0:01:59.520 It turns out that we are really blind to changes 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:03.560 in scene, and these can be quite large changes. So 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:06.840 you might have a big statue that's present in the 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:09.960 background of one photo and not the other, or a 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:15.680 jeep or an airplane, and the difference goes unseen. You 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:18.160 can see some demos of this at eagleman dot com 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:22.920 slash podcast. So what happens is that your attention slowly 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:28.600 crawls over the photograph and you analyze the interesting landmarks 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:32.440 until you finally detect what is changing. And once your 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:35.920 brain has latched on to the appropriate object, then the 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:39.800 change is trivial to see. But this happens only after 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:46.520 a pretty exhaustive inspection. This is what's known as change blindness, 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:52.160 and it highlights the importance of attention, which is to say, 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:56.360 to see an object change, you have to attend to it. 0:02:56.680 --> 0:02:59.520 And what an experiment like this surface is is that 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:03.600 you're not actually seeing the world with the rich detail 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:08.120 that you implicitly believed you were. In fact, you're not 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:12.280 aware of most of what's hitting your eyes. So imagine 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:15.600 you're watching a short film with a single actor in it. 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:19.080 He's cooking an omelet, and the camera cuts to a 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:24.000 different angle as the actor continues his cooking. Surely you 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:28.320 would notice if the actor changed into a different person, right, 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:33.679 But in studies, two thirds of observers don't. In one 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:38.840 really astonishing demonstration of change blindness, random pedestrians in a 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:41.960 courtyard were stopped by an experimenter and they were asked 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:45.600 for directions, So they start giving directions, and at some point, 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:49.560 as the unsuspecting person is in the middle of explaining 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:54.560 this workmen carrying a door walk right in between the 0:03:54.600 --> 0:04:00.400 two people, and unbeknownst to the pedestrian, the experimenter is 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:05.080 stealthily replaced by a confederate who's been hiding behind the door. 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:09.040 So the people are swapped, and after the door passes, 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:12.160 a new person is standing there and the majority of 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:17.560 subjects continue giving directions without noticing that the person they 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:20.760 were talking to is not the same one that they 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:24.880 were talking to. In other words, they were only encoding 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:28.239 small amounts of the information that was hitting their eyes. 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:34.240 The rest was assumption. Now, neuroscientists weren't the first to 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:38.160 discover that placing your eyes on something is no guarantee 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:42.000 of seeing it. Magicians figured this out long ago, and 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:46.760 they perfected ways of leveraging this knowledge. So by directing 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:51.720 your attention, magicians perform sleight of hand in full view. 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:56.000 Their actions, their hand motions should give away the game, 0:04:56.600 --> 0:05:00.040 but they can rest assured that your brain process it 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:03.960 is only small bits of the visual scene. It's not 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:07.039 everything that's hitting your retinas. And by the way, this 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:11.719 limitation of our vision helps to explain the colossal number 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:16.160 of traffic accidents in which drivers will hit pedestrians who 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:19.520 are in plane view, or they'll collide with cars that 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:22.480 are right in front of them. Sometimes you'll even see 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:26.320 stories where a car intersects with a train on the track. 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:29.839 In some of these cases, the eyes are in the 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:34.799 right place, but the brain isn't registering the stimulus. Vision 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:39.640 is more than looking Now This is all an example 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:42.800 of a larger point, which is that we're not generally 0:05:42.960 --> 0:05:47.120 aware of what's going on until we ask the question. So, 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:51.120 for example, what is the position of your tongue in 0:05:51.160 --> 0:05:54.280 your mouth right now? Once you're asked the question, you 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:57.680 can answer it, But presumably you weren't aware of the 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:01.920 answer until I asked the question. Why does the brain 0:06:02.000 --> 0:06:06.279 work this way because your brain generally doesn't need to 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:10.400 know most things. It simply needs to know how to 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:13.480 go out and retrieve the data when it needs it. 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:17.400 It perceives things on a need to know basis. You 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:21.360 don't continuously track the position of your tongue in your 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:26.440 consciousness because that knowledge is only useful in rare circumstances. 0:06:26.839 --> 0:06:30.240 So again, you're not aware of much of anything until 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:34.480 you ask yourself about it. What does your left shoe 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:37.599 feel like on your foot right now? What pitch is 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:41.000 the hum of the air conditioner in the background. Just 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:45.240 like with change blindness, we are unaware of most of 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:48.720 what should be obvious to our senses. It's only after 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:52.800 we deploy our attention onto small bits of the scene 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:56.120 that we become aware of what we were missing. And 0:06:56.200 --> 0:07:01.880 before we engage our attention. We're typically not aware that 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:04.800 we're not aware of those details. So not only is 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:08.520 our perception of the world a construction that doesn't accurately 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:12.520 represent the outside, it's weirder than that because we have 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:17.480 the false impression of a full, rich picture, when in 0:07:17.520 --> 0:07:21.200 fact we only see what we need to know and 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:23.880 what we ask questions about, and we don't see anything 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:26.160 more than that. Now, this is a topic I'm going 0:07:26.160 --> 0:07:30.080 to return to in many episodes, but for now I 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:32.960 want to ask what this has to do with the 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:42.480 economic currencies on this planet. So the scene is Lima, Peru, 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:46.440 a little before dawn. There's a bunch of houses and buildings, 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:52.240 and suddenly fifteen hundred Peruvian police officers and US Secret 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:57.120 Service agents storm the doors. This was called Operation Sunset, 0:07:57.200 --> 0:08:00.520 and it was the finale of a long running inventstigation 0:08:00.680 --> 0:08:05.480 aimed at reducing the flow of counterfeit US dollars from Peru. 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:09.960 They brought down six plants that had presses and plates 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:13.800 and negatives and piles of fake one hundred dollar bills, 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:17.160 and in just the past few years, counterfeit notes worth 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:22.000 more than seventy five million dollars have been confiscated in Peru, 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:24.960 and this is just one of lots of countries where 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:28.120 you have fraudsters who are cooking up fake dollars, And 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:32.960 it's essentially impossible to estimate the volume of counterfeit banknotes 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:36.800 passing through the US economy. What you find is that 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:40.200 the authorities claim they've captured most of the fakes, and 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:45.280 the counterfeitters claim exactly the opposite. Anyhow, counterfeiting is a 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:49.360 problem that faces every major player in the currency game. 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:53.880 Russia seizes counterfeits in the range of two hundred million 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:59.160 rubles per year. China captures five hundred million fake yu. 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:03.640 A few years years ago, India terminated their five hundred 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:06.280 and one thousand rupee notes, and this was at least 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:10.280 partially because of the rising concern about forgeries and their 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:14.320 inability to stem that. In Venezuela, the inflation was so 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:19.240 bad that it became worthwhile for fraudsters to bleach the 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:22.360 ten bole of oar bill and use the paper to 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:44.720 forge notes in other currencies. So it turns out there 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:50.600 are counterfeitters everywhere, and they're busy pushing fake banknotes into 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:54.640 streets and squares in every major city. You may wonder 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:57.480 how I came to care about counterfeits, given that I'm 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:01.600 a neuroscientist. Well, what happened is some years ago I 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:04.880 was giving a presentation at a brain science conference, and 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:08.600 afterwards I was approached by this guy and we started talking, 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:11.600 and I was surprised to learn that he was working 0:10:11.679 --> 0:10:14.800 for the European Central Bank. And I was surprised because 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:17.640 it wasn't clear to me why someone like that would 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:21.600 be at a highly academic neuroscience conference. As it turns out, 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:27.120 his job was to find a solution to Europe's counterfeiting problem. 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:32.520 Their problem was that the EU comes across hundreds of 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:36.360 thousands of fake euro banknotes every year, mostly in the 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:40.840 form of twenties and fifties. At the heart of the 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:46.800 issue is the fact that governments spend millions creating security features. 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:49.800 So while we're talking, take out a twenty dollars bill, 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:52.520 or whatever country you're in, take out a high value bill. 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:56.040 They all have similar security features. Now, if you look 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:58.959 at it, you'll see that as you tilt the note 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:03.719 slightly back in fourth there's color changing ink. So the 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:06.760 color changes here of let's say the twenty and now 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:09.160 if you hold this up to the light, what you'll 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:14.160 see is a water mark that's otherwise invisible to you. 0:11:14.160 --> 0:11:16.160 You can't see it normally, and it's not printed on 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:18.319 the front or the back, but it's printed on an 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:22.200 intermediate layer and on euros, and actually on the one 0:11:22.280 --> 0:11:26.480 hundred dollars bill. What you see are holograms. So when 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:30.080 you angle this and change this, it moves around slightly 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:33.439 and appears to be three D. And you'll also see 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:37.800 colored strips that display the value of the note. And 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:40.880 if you happen to have an ultraviolet light, turn that 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:43.520 on and hold the bill under it, and you'll see 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:46.600 that the bill turns very colorful. You've got all these 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:51.920 invisible fibers in it that fluoresce under ultraviolet. So a 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:56.839 piece of currency is a bustling collection of security devices. 0:11:57.280 --> 0:12:01.000 The problem is that no one pays attention to these 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:05.640 security devices. People who pass notes around in daily transactions 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:11.559 don't typically pause to examine them carefully. The special ink, 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:16.400 the watermark, the strip, the fibers, the hologram. These are 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:21.160 very expensive security features and they are a totally wasted 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:25.560 effort because counterfeit bills get passed from person to person 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:30.120 and no one ever notices these or notices if they 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:34.920 are badly rendered. Do you know how counterfeit bills almost 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:38.840 always are found at the banks? And that's because real 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:42.800 notes have one more feature, they have machine readable code 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:45.839 in the bill. Counterfeitters can do a good job making 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:48.559 a counterfeit, but they can't make the machine readable code, 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:51.920 and that's why the bank catches those. But the counterfeiters 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:54.600 don't need to do that because their bills get passed 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:58.960 around and no one ever notices. And this problem of 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:04.240 inattention led the European Central Bank to explore a simple question, 0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:08.400 could banknotes be better designed so that the person on 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:11.760 the street would be more likely to notice when something 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:15.240 was amiss? And for that they finally started to think 0:13:15.240 --> 0:13:19.040 about neuroscience. And that's how I got involved, because as 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:22.520 our understanding of the brain has developed over recent decades, 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:26.800 neuroscience has forged insights into a range of fields from 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:31.760 early education to consumer behavior to government policy, and modern 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:36.760 brain science has wide ranging applications, particularly when it comes 0:13:36.840 --> 0:13:40.080 to understanding the ways in which our perceptions of the 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:44.920 world are inaccurate. In the case of banknotes, the questions 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:49.040 were straightforward, what details do we notice or not notice? 0:13:49.120 --> 0:13:53.320 And why? What features could be better designed? To be 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:58.440 brain compatible of all the anti counterfeiting measures that the 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.880 government takes, which ones work, and how could their efforts 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:05.240 be better spent. So the man at the conference eventually 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:08.320 contracted with me to help them figure out the question 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:12.160 how should Europe redesign their bills? So we signed a 0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:15.360 bunch of security documents and then I flew to the 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:19.560 headquarters of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany. Now 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:22.360 this was very cool because although the building was just 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:26.680 a boring government building, I was beeped through a badge 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:31.120 protected door, and then another, and then another, and we 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:35.200 finally arrived at this small inner room at the heart 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:37.880 of the building, and there were all these piles of 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:41.560 money of euros, mostly twenties and fifties, and they were 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:46.560 all counterfeit. Each pile had some feature that distinguished it, 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:49.680 whether that was the way they had done the shiny 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:52.800 foil or the way they had done the watermarks or whatever, 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:56.560 and this is how the bank arranged them. Now, many 0:14:56.560 --> 0:15:00.320 of these forgeries were quite good. If you weren't paying 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:03.760 super close attention, the kind of attention no one ever 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:06.600 really pays to money, you couldn't tell there was anything 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:10.520 amiss with most of these forgeries you could tell under 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:13.200 ultraviolet light. But if you didn't have that, there was 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:16.520 really nothing that would even make you think to pay 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:19.760 extra attention. And here's a weird fact that I learned 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:24.400 there in the vaults. These really good forgeries, they always 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:28.680 have a slight error in them. And think about why 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:33.000 this is weird. You've got a otherwise amazingly well done 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:37.600 counterfeit bill, but it's got an error. For example, there 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:42.280 are essentially perfect counterfeits of the American twenty dollars bill. 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:46.200 But if you look at the number two, the way 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:49.240 that the bottom of the two spreads out what's called 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:54.560 the trumpeting in font language, it's just slightly wider than 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:56.760 it is on a real bill. So what's going on 0:15:56.800 --> 0:15:59.400 with that? How can you get the whole bill right 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:02.960 but not get that little detail right? And there's actually 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:05.920 one more part to this mystery. There's only one mistake 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:08.560 on a bill and no more than that. And the 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:11.520 answer is it's not a mistake. It's on purpose, and 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:16.160 it's because counterfeitters need a way to distinguish their own 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:19.280 bills from the real ones. This is so they don't 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:22.520 spend their real money accidentally. Okay, so some of these 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:26.480 bills were almost perfect with this single tiny change, But 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:30.320 that's not the part that's interesting. What's interesting is that 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:34.880 most of the counterfeits were not as expertly done as 0:16:34.880 --> 0:16:38.320 you might expect. On almost all of them, the part 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:42.760 where the color changing ink normally is didn't actually change color, 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:47.000 and on others the water mark had been hand drawn 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:51.480 really poorly, and in one pile of notes, the silver 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:56.360 hologram had been impersonated with a glued piece of shiny 0:16:56.440 --> 0:17:00.720 material from the seal of a compact disc case. Many 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:04.680 of the notes had essentially none of the actual security features. 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:08.120 But the surprising thing is this, to get a counterfeit 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:12.840 into circulation, most counterfeiters don't bother to go through the 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:17.320 trouble of making an almost perfect one. Why because it 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:21.120 makes almost no difference. Almost no one in the general 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:25.679 public notices a bad forgery. People will stuff the notes 0:17:25.720 --> 0:17:28.439 into their wallets, and they'll pass them on, and the 0:17:28.480 --> 0:17:32.160 notes spread like a virus through the population. Because as 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:37.200 banknote users, we are surprisingly unobservant. We just don't pay 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:41.800 attention to the bills in our hand. The government spends 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:46.200 an incredible amount on security features, and we don't even 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:50.320 look at it now. The ECB tried to tackle this 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:55.199 problem by hosting public awareness campaigns where they encourage people 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:59.080 to stop and look carefully at what they were holding. 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:04.400 The coach failed. People wouldn't put in the effort. Governments 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:08.800 cary enormously about security features and the population doesn't. So 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:12.280 the Central Bank now wanted to try a different tack. 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:15.800 They wanted to work out what the human visual system 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:20.679 actually notices and why there was no point spending a 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:24.320 massive amount on security features that are only noticed by 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:27.600 security experts. And that was the beginning of a long 0:18:27.720 --> 0:18:31.840 relationship I had with the ECB. For legal reasons, they 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:36.479 couldn't manufacture or mail to me counterfeit bills, and so 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:42.119 I had to figure out how to make pseudo bills myself. First, 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:45.280 I had to get approval from my university for this 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:48.960 very unusual study, and then my students that I set 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:51.760 to work. As it turns out, it's not that difficult 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:55.320 to make a rough counterfeit now. It happens that I 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:59.200 was recently talking with my friend Adam Savage of MythBusters fame, 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:02.040 and it turned out but that he also has done 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:06.560 lots of forgeries of things not illegally, but legal versions 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:10.040 of making replicas of all kinds of wonderful things. So 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:12.600 before I tell you about my experiences, I wanted to 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:19.800 ring up Adam to hear about his. So, Adam, you've 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:22.280 done some countershitting. Tell me about that? 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:26.200 Ha ha. Right, I don't want to brag that I've 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:31.400 done some counterfeiting, but I'm obsessed with the idea of replication. 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:34.040 That's one of my main practices here in the cave, 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:37.600 and so like. Just for instance, recently, I obtained a 0:19:37.640 --> 0:19:41.840 really lovely replica of one of Leonardo da Vinci's coticies. 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:45.600 This is known as the Paris manuscript A, and I've 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:48.800 been slowly spending a couple of weeks making a completely 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:52.480 accurate cover for it, based on the information from the 0:19:52.520 --> 0:19:54.920 collection that it's since so I've been printing up the 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:58.119 cover full size of and having the collection stamps made, 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:02.160 and I'm gonna slowly make this thing indistinguishable from the original. 0:20:02.240 --> 0:20:04.600 So that's the kind of counterfeiting I really dig is 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:06.359 the experiential counterfeit. 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:09.320 Oh that's amazing. Now let me ask you this. Do 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:13.640 you find that if there are changes things you don't 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:16.960 get perfect? Do you find that people don't notice those. 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:24.080 People's threshold for what they notice is it's an interesting 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:28.520 mixture because you can kind of bypass some of their 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:32.439 filters with the right amount of aging, or even sometimes 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:35.840 a smell will just have someone bypass all their filters 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:38.959 from what they can see. So it's really different object 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:42.679 by object about what the threshold is for what lends 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:46.400 what feels like an experience of veracity. 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:49.399 Have you ever tried counterfeiting money? Is that something you've 0:20:49.440 --> 0:20:49.920 ever tried? 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:53.520 Uh? I have made so behind me here on my 0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:56.800 desk pieces in my collection, and it's the bank box 0:20:56.840 --> 0:21:00.520 from the Borne identity, and this is the act bank 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:03.840 box from the Bourne identity. I bought it empty, but 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:06.640 one of my long term plans is to actually fill 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:11.359 it full of original bills or correct bills. And this 0:21:11.480 --> 0:21:13.600 is made easier by the fact that a lot of 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:15.800 the bills that were in the Boorne identity bank box 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:20.439 are now euros, and so those original currencies, the real 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:24.320 it's the frank et cetera, are no longer extant, and 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:29.399 so I get suitably and appropriately nervous even doing Google 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:33.359 searches about replicating money. But to me, your job of 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:36.680 actually trying some counterfeits to see what work sounds like 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:38.720 an absolute dream come true for me. I was like 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:40.359 I was born to be a pen tester. 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:58.320 Okay, so back to my counterfeiting contract. So the notes 0:21:58.359 --> 0:22:01.360 that we made in the lab had no security features 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:04.720 like holograms or color changing ink, because that wasn't precisely 0:22:04.720 --> 0:22:08.040 what we were studying. We were studying how much somebody 0:22:08.119 --> 0:22:11.879 would notice if we presented them with a bill with 0:22:11.960 --> 0:22:15.479 a particular design, and we let them examine it and 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:18.200 turn it around in their hands, and then we took 0:22:18.240 --> 0:22:21.800 it back and we handed them another note, and that 0:22:21.920 --> 0:22:25.159 other note might have some change that was made to it, 0:22:25.480 --> 0:22:28.240 and we asked them, is this the same bill or 0:22:28.280 --> 0:22:31.080 a different one? In other words, how much do they 0:22:31.119 --> 0:22:35.080 remember about the note that they just examined. Now, you 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:38.640 might expect that if you get to examine a note carefully, 0:22:38.720 --> 0:22:40.640 it's not going to be any problem to see when 0:22:40.680 --> 0:22:45.520 something changes, But you'd be shocked at the limits of 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:50.080 our observation and our memory. Take a simple experiment run 0:22:50.119 --> 0:22:54.320 by the psychologists Raymond Nickerson and Marilyn Adams in nineteen 0:22:54.400 --> 0:22:57.520 seventy nine. What they did is they showed people fifteen 0:22:57.760 --> 0:23:02.200 different drawings of the US penny, and one was the 0:23:02.480 --> 0:23:06.880 actual penny, while the other drawings were manipulated versions where 0:23:06.880 --> 0:23:09.439 you had the date in a different place, or you 0:23:09.480 --> 0:23:14.560 had the slogan changed, for example, United States of America 0:23:14.600 --> 0:23:18.639 instead of in God we Trust. And fewer than half 0:23:18.680 --> 0:23:23.320 the participants could identify which one was the correct penny. 0:23:23.760 --> 0:23:28.160 Although the participants handled pennies almost every day of their lives, 0:23:28.640 --> 0:23:32.280 they hadn't paid attention in the way they thought they had. 0:23:33.080 --> 0:23:40.000 Experience doesn't translate into expertise. Why not. It's because we 0:23:40.119 --> 0:23:44.679 only see what we closely attend to. So imagine you 0:23:44.840 --> 0:23:47.040 catch a glimpse of a man and a woman having 0:23:47.119 --> 0:23:50.080 a picnic in a park. All you actually see is 0:23:50.119 --> 0:23:55.200 something like man, woman food. With time, as you crawl 0:23:55.320 --> 0:23:58.879 the scene with your attentional systems, you'll incorporate more details. 0:23:58.920 --> 0:24:01.880 Oh they've got bulls of suit. It's a checkered blanket 0:24:01.920 --> 0:24:04.919 that's a little unusual. There are hills in the background, 0:24:05.320 --> 0:24:08.840 and with more time you'll notice, Oh, his spoon is 0:24:08.880 --> 0:24:12.960 slightly bent, or she's wearing a silver necklace, or the 0:24:13.200 --> 0:24:18.320 encircling trees are buckthorn. But we incorporate more detail into 0:24:18.359 --> 0:24:21.640 a scene only if we pay more attention and we 0:24:21.720 --> 0:24:25.159 ask more questions. And as I said before, it's like 0:24:25.320 --> 0:24:28.640 this with all of our senses. What is the feeling 0:24:28.720 --> 0:24:32.439 of your pants on your left kneecap right now, or 0:24:32.480 --> 0:24:35.760 the feeling of your shirt on your shoulders. As soon 0:24:35.760 --> 0:24:39.239 as you ask these questions, you can become aware of 0:24:39.280 --> 0:24:42.760 the answer, but you didn't know until you queried. So 0:24:42.880 --> 0:24:46.439 our visual sense is not like a camera that's taking 0:24:46.440 --> 0:24:50.240 in the complete scene. Instead, we see only the details 0:24:50.280 --> 0:24:52.120 that we go out to seek. And this is the 0:24:52.200 --> 0:24:56.840 issue with the banknotes. We may glance at one to 0:24:57.080 --> 0:25:01.520 verify that it matches the general template expecting, but we 0:25:01.560 --> 0:25:07.000 don't scrutinize the details. And that's why the European central 0:25:07.040 --> 0:25:11.919 banks campaign to stop and pay attention to money it 0:25:12.000 --> 0:25:16.640 just didn't work. We don't attend to things that sufficiently 0:25:16.760 --> 0:25:21.280 fit our assumptions. We believe we already know the note 0:25:21.359 --> 0:25:22.680 in our hands. 0:25:23.760 --> 0:25:26.840 I recently had a fake bail passed to me in 0:25:26.920 --> 0:25:31.119 New York City. I was getting a hot dog, which 0:25:31.200 --> 0:25:33.800 was four bucks, and I gave him a ten, and 0:25:33.880 --> 0:25:36.160 he gave me what looked like a one and a five, 0:25:36.240 --> 0:25:40.320 except the five was I'm on the street, right, I'm 0:25:40.359 --> 0:25:42.479 just I put it in my pocket. I get back 0:25:42.480 --> 0:25:45.400 to my room. The five was actually a discontinued old 0:25:45.440 --> 0:25:47.480 five thousand yen Japanese note. 0:25:50.280 --> 0:25:50.920 Exactly. 0:25:51.000 --> 0:25:54.280 We had Matt respect for him for handing that directly 0:25:54.359 --> 0:25:54.679 to me. 0:25:55.800 --> 0:25:58.480 That's amazing because you're a guy who pays so much 0:25:58.480 --> 0:26:01.800 attention to what's there, and even for you, you expect 0:26:01.800 --> 0:26:04.800 you're getting a five back, and so your brain fills 0:26:04.800 --> 0:26:06.359 in all the blanks and you just take it and 0:26:06.359 --> 0:26:08.280 you go, well, I mean, you know. 0:26:08.240 --> 0:26:10.439 It's a difficult problem to solve when you realize that 0:26:10.520 --> 0:26:14.080 we regularly interact with bills that are ancient and are 0:26:14.320 --> 0:26:18.480 filthy and like soft leather and brand new, and they're 0:26:18.520 --> 0:26:21.720 crisp and smell totally differently and look totally different. When 0:26:21.760 --> 0:26:24.320 you hold those two up against each other and you think, 0:26:24.600 --> 0:26:27.760